Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said on Wednesday that he agreed to preside over the joint session of Congress, during which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address lawmakers and the nation, to demonstrate his commitment to the “special relationship” between Israel and Israelis and the United States.
“The United States’s relationship with the State of Israel transcends politics and partisanship, and it transcends any one Israeli government or any one U.S. administration,” stated Cardin, who is Jewish and who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Its foundation is cemented in the ties between our people.”
Cardin, who is presiding over the session in the absence of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, penned a letter with Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.), chairs, respectively, of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Select Committee on Intelligence, on Wednesday to U.S. President Joe Biden.
“We write to express our strong support for the agreement that immediately would release the hostages, and end the conflict in Gaza,” the trio wrote. “We commend your focus on moving towards a sustainable and negotiated two-state outcome that ensures Israel’s long-term security as a Jewish and democratic state, living alongside a Palestinian state with equal measures of peace, dignity and prosperity.”
The three senators also referred in the letter to a “cycle of violence”—a phrase that seems to blame the Jewish state and terror groups for conflicts in the region—and said that there must be a “reformed, capable and accountable Palestinian Authority” in the “West Bank” that can “assume responsibility and security for all Palestinians and is ready and willing to fight terrorism in all its forms.” (The Biden administration and some U.S. and world leaders refer to Judea and Samaria as the “West Bank.”)
The day before the senators released their letter to Biden, the U.S. State Department responded harshly to the news that Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority, had come to a Beijing-brokered deal with Hamas, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization.
“Hamas has long been a terrorist organization. They have the blood of innocent civilians—both Israeli and Palestinian—on their hands,” said Matthew Miller, the U.S. State Department spokesman, at a Tuesday press briefing. “There can’t be a role for a terrorist organization.”